Vision Quest: Day five

Miles: 15
Climb: 805

Richard informs us that the pose above is called "hard style."  Okay, then, lads, hard style it is!

After a pleasant night at the RV park, we awake to grey, threatening skies.  A tell-tale tap of rain on the fly jolts me awake.  What's out?  I worry at first, but the rain doesn't amount to much, more attitude than magnitude, so I lie still for a while in the cool dawn and watch the undulating ceiling pulse and roll.    Suddenly motivated for some reason, I roll the pad, flip and flop to squeeze out the air, stuff the tent, and shuttle everything down to the picnic table and my waiting bike, whom I've finally named--Ol' Blue, Blue for short.  It's a clever name, a moniker unguessable given the paint job.  Still, I like it.  So Blue it is.

I put water on to boil and roust the team, although Richard appears suddenly,  ready to ride.  I talk to Jodi via the miraculous cellular phone device.  It's a little lump of plastic that you talk into, and you can hear people talk back--from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.  Fantastic.  You all should get one.  Finally packed, we crunch and skitter down the dirt road and leave the Eagle's Nest RV Park behind us, bound for an obscure cave not marked on the tourist maps.  Lava Beds National Monument is well known for its caves, but this is to be our private adventure--no rangers or regulations.  To get there, first do a cycling tour that stops at the Eagle's Nest RV Park.  Then, ask about their "secret" cave!  The entrance is well hidden.  Without specific directions, we would not have found it, and casual travelers will never suspect the geologic wonder that lurks below.  We bounce out into the sage under stormy skies and locate the entrance:

Once in the cave, we encounter a wondrous lava tube, usually tall enough for me to stand fully, although we all had to duck-walk-crouch at times.  This is a volcanic structure, so the stalactites and stalagmites that make limestone caves so enchanting are not present.  Still, we are totally thrilled and walk for hundreds of yards in the dark.  In places, massive basalt blocks have caved in, so I give the ceiling hard looks from time to time, although I only bump my head once.  Moisture beads up and drips slowly, dimpling the sandy floor.  Lights hitting the water make it glow like diamonds.  We take time out for hard style and brake dance moves.  A solitary bat guards the entrance.

After our subterranean adventure, we reclaim the surface and push on for the monument, not many miles, but grim skies and headwinds dominate a challenging little ride.

Finally, we enter the monument and hang out at the visitor's center for a while but eventually scurry quickly for camp as some rain makes an entrance.  Camp is an idyllic little place and one of my favorites on the tour with great views of the surrounding countryside:

A cool evening, the wind sighing into the junipers sings the intrepid cyclists to sleep.

Vision Quest: Day four

Miles: 20.4
Climb: 190

Easy day, except....

I slept well in my nylon cave, safe from the bugs.  At 5:30AM, it is cool enough to hold the beasts down, but at 7:00AM,  someone throws a switch, and the Satan Spawn boil up from the forest floor and set upon us with hungry stingers.  We conclude our packing in a rush, Kevin at one point doing a crazed Three Stooges loopy run while dressing in order to stay one step ahead of the insectile fan club.  At last, locked and loaded, we push for the road and the sure escape of movement.  By 10 mph, the little biotches can't keep up.

A sharp morning sun knifes through the piney canopy, light and shadow banding the road.   We zip and holler, wolf down the miles like starving men. The air clearer now, Mt. Shasta floats like an ice cream dream to the west, its long glaciers and gullies heavy with snow.  At the end of Lookout-Hackmore Rd., we pause to strip down just in time for the fiendish press of bugs, a blood sport, this.  We dance, jog and skip again and jump onto the bikes to escape.  Back on 139 we find a narrow but serviceable shoulder and generally light traffic, gently rolling, downward trending--fast.  By 9AM we turn off 139, now only a couple of miles from camp.  Hero shots and quick run to camp, the Eagle's Nest RV Park and the road angels, Craig and Barbara.  Showers, laundry for $5 (folded!), supplies for a couple of days, and, the greatest blessing of all, virtually no mosquitoes.  Sweet refuge indeed.

After getting cleaned up, we walk over to the "store," which is more of a saloon, although at one time in the early days it was a bordello serving the ranchers and loggers that once made this quiet place very busy.    Denise, the barmaid, owner, and happily disgruntled escapee from southern California, greets us from behind the bar.  Low-beamed ceiling, the room in general is festooned with old-timey junk, sun-bleached antlers, a couple of dusty, ratty animal hides, stuffed heads of deer, antelope and bear staring with glassy dead eyes, dollar bills stapled above.  A couple of beer posters of hot young things in compromising positions are wedged in between beams.  Filling in all the gaps are many dozens of photos of proud hunters and fishermen with their catches.  If not classy, the aesthetic is at least cluttered.  As Denise would tell us, the most active season is in the fall when the hunters arrive to chase down the various hooved animals with antlers.  With her grey hair tied back, bi-focals, Denise has the gentle rasp of the life-long smoker and does her best to maintain that tone by lighting up again.  She talks about her life, her sons--one doing well working on a ranch in Washington, the other tending bar after a stint in the military--"Good thing they teach 'em valuable job skills in the army!" she snorts.  She seems to enjoy her roll as host, although she says the saloon makes little money.  Certainly she's not selling much besides liquid refreshment (which I'll return for later).   The dusty shelves are virtually empty but for a few fishing lures and some ancient packets of dehydrated soup mix.  Nope, definitely no supplies here.  Eventually we wander back to camp to read in the shade and enjoy the quiet afternoon in this temporarily forgotten backwater.

Vision Quest: Day three

Miles: 45.8
Climb: 1065

Grey dawn, hardly a breeze, up and out of the tent at 5:30AM, birds already doing their thing, 38 deg. F.  We have breakfast and almost spit it up as Kevin shows us how he'd take out a bear should one make the mistake of gettin' up in his greel--go totally off-the-hook ghetto with a plastic pooper shovel.  We finally leave camp at the genteel hour of 8AM, rolling hills then down and down and out into broad sage-filled basin, the small town of Adin clustered in trees and braced to the north and east by crusty volcanic ridges.  Distant views are hazy--the product of a fire we won't smell until late in the afternoon--but there's no denying this is great riding.  In Adin we stop for a snack and pick up some supplies for the night, a spot of decent Chilean red for the adults (?) in the crew.  In the restroom are a few posters printed on tin: "Wine--how classy people get wasted." Or "I drink coffee because I need it.  I drink wine because I deserve  it."

From Adin, we head due west, Mt. Shasta a ghostly white island on the horizon.  These miles are effortless, a gift before the punishment that will follow after lunch.  But at the moment we are ignorant of the future and ride in the moment, which is all we can ask for.

Before heading north again, we encounter these animals, more commonly associated with Wyoming:

Local color in Lookout, where we had lunch and packed water for the coming dry camp.  There don't appear to be any "services," but there is a currently an open Post Office:

After lunch, the Heat Lamp of the Gods--Apollo especially, eh?--is turned up to 11. We soldier on, pouring sweat.  Perhaps only in the mid-80's deg. F., it is hot enough to have us gasping on the slow climbs and seeking shade for breaks.  We ascend firmly into the National Forest, and for the first time, I smell smoke on the breeze.  Where is that fire?  We never get an answer.  With some logging activity going on, it's time to play tag with that most miserable of creatures: the loggingtruckdriverus jerkus americanus.  Most of the blokes were fine, but why are these particular drivers so often a-holes?  A pair of heavily loaded rigs piloted by pin-headed demons decide it would be great fun to swing wide into the opposite lane--my lane--and lay on the horn, ya know, just scare the skinny cyclist idiots, right?  Good fun--har, har! On the plus side, the call isn't close, and I continue my most excellent cycling adventure with excellent friends while the loser truck drivers are trapped in their diesel-spewing, rattly kidney punchers and will finish their day in a low-rent dump feeding their loser, low-life alcoholic cirrhosis-blasted livers, maybe beat the girlfriends for good measure.  Sorry, gals, make better choices.  Dump 'em and find a real man.  You can tell he's a good man because you'll find him riding a bike--not trying to run down riders for sport.

We pick a good dirt road and roll back some distance from the pavement and pull off into the woods.  A nice, flat, pine-needle covered floor invites the would-be campers who, excited at the prospect of  a good stop, jump off their bikes into the warm, inviting embrace of...blood sucking mosquito bastards.  Well, technically bitches 'cause only the females suck blood.  The only real vampires I know aren't pretty or sexy or sparkly or endowed with goofy Hungarian accents.  They're bugs.  And they just suck.  Too our great relief, at least one of us has thought ahead: Kevin has packed the repellant, and a healthy spraying wards off the worst of it, although we all end up suffering puncture wounds on unprotected flesh.  Sigh....

Still, the camp is quiet, the ground soft, and we settle in as best we can--tolerable but itchy scratchy:

Vision Quest: Day two

Miles: 53.5
Climb: 3330 ft.

The first day began early as I have early-riser-itis.  Also, more importantly, we were looking at one of the toughest days of the tour--at least fifty miles with a couple of major passes.  We rolled over to Starbucks for coffee and our home-brewed breakfast on the patio.  The evil black liquid for me and Kevin; mint tea for Richard.  Kevin and I will push frequently during the trip to bring Richard over to The Dark Side--but with little success.  Our career path as drug dealers goes down in flames.  We are rolling through town, the tour underway at last, by 7:15AM--yo!  Richard high-5's a couple of guys standing by the side of the road as we ride by.  An auspicious beginning, if you ask me.

The day jumps right into a major climb just out of town--Antelope Summit, named for the beasts we will see later in the day.  At one point, I drift off the pavement and into soft volcanic shoulder dust and come to a stop.  Kevin, following too close, breaks, pivots to miss me, his seat spins too, and WHAM! down he goes.  The first casualty of the tour:

His elbow takes some grief, too, but they're merely flesh wounds.  We ride for the Wounded Warriors after all.  Gotta leave a little precious bodily fluid on the pavement for the touring gods.  We adjust Kevin's seat and enjoy the view.  At this point we also call other angels of the tour--Barbara and Craig at the Eagle's Nest RV Campground outside Lava Beds National Monument.  Craig had offered to pick us up supplies as there was no store in the area, and our camp there would be a couple days off from the nearest supply point--Adin.  With great good cheer and enthusiasm, he offered to get whatever we wanted.  I call and talk to Barbara, his wife, and give her a list of things for the night we would spend there and the next in the monument--fantastic people!

The rest of the day is spent in long climbs, crossing valleys, and struggling into a fierce headwind and gathering storm on the last ascent before camp. Our stop for the night, mercifully, comes on a descent.  There's something deeply annoying about having to climb up to camp.  We have a few miles of drop to Willow Creek and a closed campground--perfect.  No neighbors.  We slip under the gate and pitch camp.  Restrooms are open, and I, expecting certain trials, have packed a water filter, so the nearby creek will be our water source. We have all we need for our first night on the road.  Behold the wonders of Lassen County: